Where is Consciousness?

[Jason Resch]

I wrote a few pages towards a solution to the hard problem (bridging the explanatory gap). This particular section deals with the "Where?" of consciousness, why we can't seem to locate it in any part of the brain, or detect it by any physical means:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYr5TJLuFvoCn4qjHJtETMgXXXr8jWXA/view?usp=sharing

The next part I will work on will tackle the harder part of the hard problem, the "why?"

I of course welcome any comments, questions, or criticism.

Jason

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Jason,

It says:

"We cannot hold consciousness like we can material things.

Nor, when we look inside the brain, do we ever see someone

else’s consciousness."

It is true that consciousness is a process, but a process must be running on something physical.

We can hold the things that make up the process, we can know where those things are, and we can observe them processing.

And we are "seeing" someone else's consciousness (both the process and the stuff on which the process is running) when we look in other's brains and watch them process.  The only problem is the abstract names and descriptions of all this doesn't tell us what any of it is like without grounded definitions.

The strawberry reflects red light, because it has a 'red' property.  But the properties of the light, are not like the properties of the strawberry.  That is why "seeing" or any substrate independent or abstracting perception can't tell you what the qualities are like, even though we can 'see' them.  A description of how glutamate reacts in a synapse doesn't tell you what that process is like,

There are qualities of subjective knowledge in both our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere, and both hemispheres knows what the qualities in the other are like.  This is because there is something more than "seeing" or abstract communication between the qualities in both hemispheres going on.  In order for there to be consciousness, you must have a process that enables you to know what things are like.  You always make the mistake of defining your systems to not include anything that can do this, and this mistake is the only reason there is a 'hard problem' in your mistaken way of thinking.

When you include subjective binding, or some ability to ground your definitions with direct apprehension of what we are 'seeing' there are no hard problems, and it is possible to directly apprehend qualities in other's brains and know what those qualities are qualities of and where they are located.

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[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 1:55 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,

It says:

"We cannot hold consciousness like we can material things.

Nor, when we look inside the brain, do we ever see someone

else’s consciousness."

It is true that consciousness is a process, but a process must be running on something physical.

I agree that the process is never fully independent of its instantiation.

 

We can hold the things that make up the process, we can know where those things are, and we can observe them processing.

A process, being extended in both time and space, is ultimately a four-dimensional structure in four-dimensional spacetime. We can observe the things that instantiate a process overtime, but it isn't possible to grasp or see a 4D structure like we can with other "things," whose entire state is embodied in an instant.

 

And we are "seeing" someone else's consciousness (both the process and the stuff on which the process is running) when we look in other's brains and watch them process.  The only problem is the abstract names and descriptions of all this doesn't tell us what any of it is like without grounded definitions.

I think with a sufficiently powerful brain, it is possible to gain some insight into what it is like to be a being able to make certain kinds of distinctions, and whose distinctions carry certain kinds of associations. For instance, we can, with our limited brains, intuit something of what it is like to be a thermostat able to distinguish between one of two states. Though, one can never fully know what it is like to be something else, without actually being that something else. If chocolate is your favorite flavor, can you know what it is like to hate the taste of chocolate? I think it is not possible to know what that feeling is like using a brain whose favorite flavor is chocolate.

 

The strawberry reflects red light, because it has a 'red' property.  But the properties of the light, are not like the properties of the strawberry.  That is why "seeing" or any substrate independent or abstracting perception can't tell you what the qualities are like, even though we can 'see' them.  A description of how glutamate reacts in a synapse doesn't tell you what that process is like,

Here you seem to be saying something possibly new to me. Are you saying it is not enough to know that glutamate is redness, but that one must know how glutamate fits into the larger process of a red sensation? Is the behavior and role of glutamate in the process "what counts?"

 

There are qualities of subjective knowledge in both our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere, and both hemispheres knows what the qualities in the other are like.  This is because there is something more than "seeing" or abstract communication between the qualities in both hemispheres going on.  In order for there to be consciousness, you must have a process that enables you to know what things are like.  You always make the mistake of defining your systems to not include anything that can do this, and this mistake is the only reason there is a 'hard problem' in your mistaken way of thinking.

As I see it, likeness is an attribute of nearness within an N-dimensional quality space. Having a particular conscious state is the state of a process having made the necessary discriminations to determine a particular position in that quality space. Being in that state of having made those discriminations and distinctions is what it is to have a subjective state of knowledge/awareness/qualia.

 

When you include subjective binding, or some ability to ground your definitions with direct apprehension of what we are 'seeing' there are no hard problems, and it is possible to directly apprehend qualities in other's brains and know what those qualities are qualities of and where they are located.

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

Jason

 

On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 4:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wrote a few pages towards a solution to the hard problem (bridging the explanatory gap). This particular section deals with the "Where?" of consciousness, why we can't seem to locate it in any part of the brain, or detect it by any physical means:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYr5TJLuFvoCn4qjHJtETMgXXXr8jWXA/view?usp=sharing

The next part I will work on will tackle the harder part of the hard problem, the "why?"

I of course welcome any comments, questions, or criticism.

Jason

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[Brent Allsop]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 1:55 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,

It says:

"We cannot hold consciousness like we can material things.

Nor, when we look inside the brain, do we ever see someone

else’s consciousness."

It is true that consciousness is a process, but a process must be running on something physical.

I agree that the process is never fully independent of its instantiation.

 

We can hold the things that make up the process, we can know where those things are, and we can observe them processing.

A process, being extended in both time and space, is ultimately a four-dimensional structure in four-dimensional spacetime. We can observe the things that instantiate a process overtime, but it isn't possible to grasp or see a 4D structure like we can with other "things," whose entire state is embodied in an instant.

 

And we are "seeing" someone else's consciousness (both the process and the stuff on which the process is running) when we look in other's brains and watch them process.  The only problem is the abstract names and descriptions of all this doesn't tell us what any of it is like without grounded definitions.

I think with a sufficiently powerful brain, it is possible to gain some insight into what it is like to be a being able to make certain kinds of distinctions, and whose distinctions carry certain kinds of associations. For instance, we can, with our limited brains, intuit something of what it is like to be a thermostat able to distinguish between one of two states. Though, one can never fully know what it is like to be something else, without actually being that something else. If chocolate is your favorite flavor, can you know what it is like to hate the taste of chocolate? I think it is not possible to know what that feeling is like using a brain whose favorite flavor is chocolate.

 

The strawberry reflects red light, because it has a 'red' property.  But the properties of the light, are not like the properties of the strawberry.  That is why "seeing" or any substrate independent or abstracting perception can't tell you what the qualities are like, even though we can 'see' them.  A description of how glutamate reacts in a synapse doesn't tell you what that process is like,

Here you seem to be saying something possibly new to me. Are you saying it is not enough to know that glutamate is redness, but that one must know how glutamate fits into the larger process of a red sensation? Is the behavior and role of glutamate in the process "what counts?"

Surely whatever has a redness quality behaves in a certain way (greenness behaves differently).  While the behavior 'counts', it isn't all there is.  Abstractly detecting behavior doesn't tell you what it is like (why it is behaving the way it does).  Perception is only about behavior, but there must be something more - the quality.  In order to be conscious, you must also have a way to directly apprehend the quality itself.  The quality is also "what counts", and when someone defines a system such that direct apprehension of qualities isn't possible, you end up with 'hard problems'

 

There are qualities of subjective knowledge in both our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere, and both hemispheres knows what the qualities in the other are like.  This is because there is something more than "seeing" or abstract communication between the qualities in both hemispheres going on.  In order for there to be consciousness, you must have a process that enables you to know what things are like.  You always make the mistake of defining your systems to not include anything that can do this, and this mistake is the only reason there is a 'hard problem' in your mistaken way of thinking.

As I see it, likeness is an attribute of nearness within an N-dimensional quality space. Having a particular conscious state is the state of a process having made the necessary discriminations to determine a particular position in that quality space. Being in that state of having made those discriminations and distinctions is what it is to have a subjective state of knowledge/awareness/qualia.

 

When you include subjective binding, or some ability to ground your definitions with direct apprehension of what we are 'seeing' there are no hard problems, and it is possible to directly apprehend qualities in other's brains and know what those qualities are qualities of and where they are located.

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

I can abstractly know everything about the color 'grue' which I have never experienced before.  I can know what has that quality, I can know how it (grue) behaves.  But until grue is subjectively bound into my subjective experience, and I directly apprehend it, I'm not 'conscious' of grue, I only know about it in the abstract.

 

Jason

 

On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 4:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wrote a few pages towards a solution to the hard problem (bridging the explanatory gap). This particular section deals with the "Where?" of consciousness, why we can't seem to locate it in any part of the brain, or detect it by any physical means:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYr5TJLuFvoCn4qjHJtETMgXXXr8jWXA/view?usp=sharing

The next part I will work on will tackle the harder part of the hard problem, the "why?"

I of course welcome any comments, questions, or criticism.

Jason

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[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 4:21 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 1:55 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,

It says:

"We cannot hold consciousness like we can material things.

Nor, when we look inside the brain, do we ever see someone

else’s consciousness."

It is true that consciousness is a process, but a process must be running on something physical.

I agree that the process is never fully independent of its instantiation.

 

We can hold the things that make up the process, we can know where those things are, and we can observe them processing.

A process, being extended in both time and space, is ultimately a four-dimensional structure in four-dimensional spacetime. We can observe the things that instantiate a process overtime, but it isn't possible to grasp or see a 4D structure like we can with other "things," whose entire state is embodied in an instant.

 

And we are "seeing" someone else's consciousness (both the process and the stuff on which the process is running) when we look in other's brains and watch them process.  The only problem is the abstract names and descriptions of all this doesn't tell us what any of it is like without grounded definitions.

I think with a sufficiently powerful brain, it is possible to gain some insight into what it is like to be a being able to make certain kinds of distinctions, and whose distinctions carry certain kinds of associations. For instance, we can, with our limited brains, intuit something of what it is like to be a thermostat able to distinguish between one of two states. Though, one can never fully know what it is like to be something else, without actually being that something else. If chocolate is your favorite flavor, can you know what it is like to hate the taste of chocolate? I think it is not possible to know what that feeling is like using a brain whose favorite flavor is chocolate.

 

The strawberry reflects red light, because it has a 'red' property.  But the properties of the light, are not like the properties of the strawberry.  That is why "seeing" or any substrate independent or abstracting perception can't tell you what the qualities are like, even though we can 'see' them.  A description of how glutamate reacts in a synapse doesn't tell you what that process is like,

Here you seem to be saying something possibly new to me. Are you saying it is not enough to know that glutamate is redness, but that one must know how glutamate fits into the larger process of a red sensation? Is the behavior and role of glutamate in the process "what counts?"

Surely whatever has a redness quality behaves in a certain way (greenness behaves differently).  While the behavior 'counts', it isn't all there is.  Abstractly detecting behavior doesn't tell you what it is like (why it is behaving the way it does).  Perception is only about behavior, but there must be something more - the quality.  In order to be conscious, you must also have a way to directly apprehend the quality itself.  The quality is also "what counts", and when someone defines a system such that direct apprehension of qualities isn't possible, you end up with 'hard problems'

 

There are qualities of subjective knowledge in both our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere, and both hemispheres knows what the qualities in the other are like.  This is because there is something more than "seeing" or abstract communication between the qualities in both hemispheres going on.  In order for there to be consciousness, you must have a process that enables you to know what things are like.  You always make the mistake of defining your systems to not include anything that can do this, and this mistake is the only reason there is a 'hard problem' in your mistaken way of thinking.

As I see it, likeness is an attribute of nearness within an N-dimensional quality space. Having a particular conscious state is the state of a process having made the necessary discriminations to determine a particular position in that quality space. Being in that state of having made those discriminations and distinctions is what it is to have a subjective state of knowledge/awareness/qualia.

 

When you include subjective binding, or some ability to ground your definitions with direct apprehension of what we are 'seeing' there are no hard problems, and it is possible to directly apprehend qualities in other's brains and know what those qualities are qualities of and where they are located.

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

I can abstractly know everything about the color 'grue' which I have never experienced before.  I can know what has that quality, I can know how it (grue) behaves.  But until grue is subjectively bound into my subjective experience, and I directly apprehend it, I'm not 'conscious' of grue, I only know about it in the abstract.

I agree there's a distinction between abstract third person knowledge and directly apprehended knowledge.

It is the distinction between knowing all third person knowledge about a brain experiencing grue, v.s. being the brain knowing grue.

"K(K(grue))" is different from "K(grue)"

I describe this in my treatment of Mary's room.

Jason 

 

Jason

 

On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 4:58 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wrote a few pages towards a solution to the hard problem (bridging the explanatory gap). This particular section deals with the "Where?" of consciousness, why we can't seem to locate it in any part of the brain, or detect it by any physical means:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYr5TJLuFvoCn4qjHJtETMgXXXr8jWXA/view?usp=sharing

The next part I will work on will tackle the harder part of the hard problem, the "why?"

I of course welcome any comments, questions, or criticism.

Jason

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[Brent Allsop]

I think we are mostly in agreement, and I think your terminology is just ambiguous.

There should be two types of K.

K = directly apprehend  (conscious/phenomenal)

k = perceive, abstractly, via cause and effect/communication. (non conscious)

K(K(grue) is the same as K(grue)  (i.e. as enabled by a neuro ponytail or corpus callosum.)

But k(K(grue) is not equal to K(grue)

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/the-important-questions/CA%2BBCJUhZcmtXZu3mqokEEHKFYiAFbA9FEh15hJ0MVvrqu-%2Bq3Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Jason,

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

This is very fascinating, as it seems to be identical to the way I think, unless I am not fully understanding.

When you talk about "knowledge states" required to play soccer, would you agree that this is a world in your head made up of subjectively bound voxel pixels with color qualities as described by Steven Lehar in this The World in Your Head video?  With our knowledge of the soccer ball in this world?

And would you agree that this knowledge state is like a user interface to physical reality (like a windows interface on a computer), allowing us to play soccer and such with a simplified representation of what is 'out there'?

 

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 9:58 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

This is very fascinating, as it seems to be identical to the way I think, unless I am not fully understanding.

:-)

 

When you talk about "knowledge states" required to play soccer, would you agree that this is a world in your head made up of subjectively bound voxel pixels with color qualities as described by Steven Lehar in this The World in Your Head video?

I would agree that knowledge states are in a sense, made up in one's head (or whatever one's mental substrate may happen to be). But I think I lose you when you introduce terms such as "subjectively bound", and "voxel pixels with color qualities".

For instance, I don't think color experience is necessary for playing soccer. A robot could play with black and white vision. Or it may construct a 2D representation of the field with an overhead camera. Of course, there may be algorithmic efficiencies to be had if the perception system of the robot can label different areas of what it can see, e.g. "this is field", "this is a team mate", "this is an opponent", "this is my goal", "this is my opponents goal", "this is the ball", "this is me", as some kind of pre-processing step before higher-level processing. But note that such kinds of discriminations need not be color in the same sense of our trichromatic, three dimensional color space having the Blue-v-Yellow Red-v-Green and White-v-Black axes kinds of vision. I can imagine a more simplistic 7-state "enum" to handle the 7 different things that might exist in the robot's experience of the soccer field.

 

  With our knowledge of the soccer ball in this world?

And would you agree that this knowledge state is like a user interface to physical reality (like a windows interface on a computer), allowing us to play soccer and such with a simplified representation of what is 'out there'?

Yes I think there are many parallels between consciousness as we experience it at the top-level, and a user interface in a computer system. Both obscure all the details happening below, both present a limited range of actions (e.g. walk that way, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands of muscle contractions needed to walk over there), both are abstractions for which there is unlimited potential to implement anything (across the total space of possible minds).

I in fact use the user-interface analogy in part of my article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G24kryu_Ytl3whMT58uj-0kjrNWJIqg-/view?usp=sharing

Jason

[Brent Allsop]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 1:38 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 9:58 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jason,

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

I would say that the hard problem, which Chalmers states as "Why is it the case that information processing is accompanied by subjective experience?" is a valid question, and that it has an answer. The answer is that certain processes involve knowledge states. Consider a robot that can play soccer. For the robot to function, some element of its software must be aware of its relative position to the ball and the goal. Without this knowledge state, it would not be able to effect its goal of getting the ball into the goal. Therefore, for a process to function as a proficient soccer player, the process must contain (minimally) knowledge of such things as the position of the ball, goal, in relation to its own position. These states of knowledge must be known to, and belong to, something in the process that controls the robot's actions. These states of knowledge are part of that process's "subjective experience." One cannot have a process that reliably acts as if it knows where the ball is, unless the process in fact knows where the ball is. To know something is to be conscious of something.

This is what I see as the answer to Chalmers's hard problem.

This is very fascinating, as it seems to be identical to the way I think, unless I am not fully understanding.

:-)

 

When you talk about "knowledge states" required to play soccer, would you agree that this is a world in your head made up of subjectively bound voxel pixels with color qualities as described by Steven Lehar in this The World in Your Head video?

I would agree that knowledge states are in a sense, made up in one's head (or whatever one's mental substrate may happen to be). But I think I lose you when you introduce terms such as "subjectively bound", and "voxel pixels with color qualities".

We have visual knowledge made of qualities of all the surfaces we can see in 3D space or a world in our head.  Any one of the points on those 3D surfaces could change quality at any point in time.  So you can consider all of these points of knowledge that make up surfaces of our subjective knowledge as 3D Voxels (similar to 2D pixels only in 3D space).

For instance, I don't think color experience is necessary for playing soccer. A robot could play with black and white vision. Or it may construct a 2D representation of the field with an overhead camera. Of course, there may be algorithmic efficiencies to be had if the perception system of the robot can label different areas of what it can see, e.g. "this is field", "this is a team mate", "this is an opponent", "this is my goal", "this is my opponents goal", "this is the ball", "this is me", as some kind of pre-processing step before higher-level processing. But note that such kinds of discriminations need not be color in the same sense of our trichromatic, three dimensional color space having the Blue-v-Yellow Red-v-Green and White-v-Black axes kinds of vision. I can imagine a more simplistic 7-state "enum" to handle the 7 different things that might exist in the robot's experience of the soccer field.

This is exactly the same kind of stuff I try to communicate with this picture:

 

All the voxel elements that make up our knowledge could be engineered to be represented with redness or greenness or any other qualities, including qualities we have never experienced before.  We could also be engineered to represent the qualities with words, as depicted by R.

The 'subjective binding' is how the computation is achieved.  With a computer, registers in a CPU are loaded (rendered by the perception system) with words representing qualities.  Then there are the brute force discrete logic gates that operate on those rendered registers.  Brains don't use discrete logic to operate on the different values representing qualities in our brain, we use phenomenal subjective binding.  Every voxel element of our knowledge is the result of our perception system rendering all these voxel registers with particular qualities into the vastly paralel set of voxel registers of our brain's subjectively bound "CPU" making up the world in our head.  When we are aware of all these voxel elements of our visual knowledge at the same time, as one unified gestalt experience, that is what computation is.  This phenomenal computation is designed to be 'like something specific: redness or greenness' and done in parallel, while discrete logic gate computation is abstract, done sequentially, pixel at a time, and designed to be substrate independent (requires a transduction piece of dictionary hardware to get you between different physical representations.)  In order for something to do phenomenal computing (be considered as conscious, unlike the R system) it must have at least two qualities (i.e. redness and greenness) subjectively bound into one unified experience.  If it has that, it is phenomenally conscious and like something specific (A, B, and C) if not, it is just abstract (R).

I don't know why it is so hard for people to understand what seems so clear to me.  I try to capture all this in our "Computational Binding" video, but people just don't ever seem to get what I'm trying to say.

 

  With our knowledge of the soccer ball in this world?

And would you agree that this knowledge state is like a user interface to physical reality (like a windows interface on a computer), allowing us to play soccer and such with a simplified representation of what is 'out there'?

Yes I think there are many parallels between consciousness as we experience it at the top-level, and a user interface in a computer system. Both obscure all the details happening below, both present a limited range of actions (e.g. walk that way, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands of muscle contractions needed to walk over there), both are abstractions for which there is unlimited potential to implement anything (across the total space of possible minds).

I in fact use the user-interface analogy in part of my article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G24kryu_Ytl3whMT58uj-0kjrNWJIqg-/view?usp=sharing

Wouldn't it be great if we could come up with a concise description of what we all agree on about what consciousness is, and build a consensus petition around this, so people could have a trusted, clear and trackable expert consensus, description of what consciousness is, and what the true "solution" to the 'hard problem' is?  Everyone and their dog thinks they have a solution to the 'hard problem' but clearly most of them don't even understand what the hard problem is, let alone have a 'solution'.  You know the solution to the 'hard problem'  The voices of you, me, and so many others that agree on most of this,  just get lost in all this BS bleating and tweeting noise.

 

Jason

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